


Glasses and Royalty

by Xairathan



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Lots and lots of drabbles, Misato and Ritsuko show up, but mainly those two - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3954103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of shorts focusing on Asuka and Mari's relationship between 2.22 and 3.33.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eight-Sentence Fic

**Author's Note:**

> A few of these are experiments on form, the rest are aspects that caught my attention. They're named accordingly.

Mari isn't the type who looks up to people, yet she makes one exception for Yui.

 

After Yui leaves her behind, she sleeps, and in her dreams she's always falling.

 

The adults wake her up for one purpose; they will destroy her immediately thereafter.

 

She escapes Unit-05 with ease, eyes fixed on the crossed heavens as she thanks it for keeping her alive.

 

The next Evangelion unit to save her ends up impaled on a spear, and with it, Mari feels her heart go as well.

 

Unit-01 and its inhabitants have ascended, and how Mari wishes she could join them.

 

Although Mari's taller than Shikinami, when they meet for the first time, Mari's heart feels like it's looking up again.

 

Everyone's gazes are fixed on the Tesseract as it descends, but Mari only has eyes for Unit-02. 


	2. One-Sentence Fic

After they lost the most important person in their life, they didn't know what to do until they met each other.


	3. Breathe

Spending so much time on the _Wunder_ has made Asuka too accustomed to the background noise and the vibrations of the engines under her feet. Lying on the dirt, the stillness and quiet unnerves her. A gentle scraping shatters the fragile silence as she rolls onto her side, leaving an even deeper indent in the red soil. Asuka's eye narrows at the two silhouettes sleeping soundly an arm's reach away. She feels nothing but disgust for one and pity for the other, but she also envies them: she wishes rest would come as easily to her as it does for them.

 

The faintest breeze brushes past her ear, and her eye shoots wide open with realization. A second later, she scrunches it shut, pounding a hand against the soil near her head. _I don't want this now,_ she grumbles to herself. Still, she can't seem to shake the memory of her bunkmate's steady, measured breathing. Asuka has never thought much about it until now, when it's absent and all she can hear is nothing. Perhaps it comes with being a singer, or a sniper, but she can't remember a night when Mari's breathing faltered. _Maybe mimicking it will help,_ she thinks grudgingly. _If I can remember how it goes._

 

Closing her eye, Asuka lies with her hands crossed beneath her head, her chest meeting the cool earth with each drawn out sigh. _Still too tense, Princess,_ she imagines Mari saying. _You need to relax!_ And so she does, willing her shoulders to unclench and her breaths to come naturally. She feels each one deep in her stomach, the fatigue of the day's battle finally setting in, and imagines Mari smiling as she turns out the lights and clambering up metal rungs. Sleep comes shortly after.

 

That night she dreams of songs written before she was born, and of the companion she hopes to see soon. 


	4. To Wish Upon a Star

Mari realizes there's going to be trouble even before Asuka's Evangelion reaches the Tesseract. With Unit-02's heat shield gone, Asuka will have to ride the dark metal box down through the atmosphere, leaving her open to any attack from hostile Units. Unit-08's orbit has already begun to deteriorate, and with each passing second she loses several hundred feet. Still, Mari sights and fires her rifle, humming beneath her breath as she does. Before the mission, Asuka had asked her to sing; even if her partner is too occupied to hear her, Mari still feels obligated to hold to Asuka's request.

 

She stops humming as the Mark.04 Code 4B unfolds, watching its silvery strands unfold and expand. Keeping an eye on her altimeter, Mari struggles to line up a shot, her increasing downward velocity making it impossible to aim. Brushing aside the complex systems with a frustrated wave of her hand, she fires. The energy package veers wide, far from the target, and with a pang of regret Mari realizes she has to leave Asuka to fight on her own. To try and continue to help would cause irreparable damage to her Unit- and maybe even death.

 

The first word of Mari's hurried apology is strained, frightened, desperation hidden behind the scratchy static of their communications. She regains control of her emotions long enough to give Asuka some confident-sounding parting words. "I don't have enough altitude, so see ya!" she says as Unit-08 kicks away its protective covering and gun and prepares for re-entry. Asuka's reply is lost in the subsequent radio blackout.

 

In the moments before the burning corona of heat blots out her vision, Mari can see the Mark.04 billow outward, its white cross-shaped lasers scoring blows against Unit-02. As Unit-08 shuts down and goes dark, Mari removes her helmet and closes her eyes. Asuka is high above, fighting for her life, and here she is in the safety of her Unit, a shooting star in a hollow sky. _Shouldn't I get a wish?_ Mari thinks, hunching over. It probably won't work; it definitely doesn't make sense, but at least it makes her feel better when she whispers, _"Keep the Princess safe for me, Yui."_

 

Splashdown and retrieval become a blur to Mari, a symphony of noise and movement that she pays no attention to. Only when she sees a second light burning in the heavens does everything click back into its rightful place, and only once she's hugged Asuka and skipped off humming again does everything feel normal again. 


	5. Cat Ears

"Out of all the stupid ideas you've had, this is the worst!" Asuka slaps her hand on the meeting table, leaving a small dent in the steel. Across from her, Ritsuko presses a hand to her forehead.

 

"Look, if we don't get to the Tesseract before NERV, we might as well surrender now." Misato jabs at a series of plans laid out for the assembled to see. "If NERV isn't expecting us to try and take it, we'll have a better chance of success."

 

"There's still going to be defenses," Asuka retorts. "Kone-megane, back me up!" Mari, doodling idly on a piece of scrap paper, waves. "Ugh... look, it's a waste of our resources, Misato. We'd be better off attacking NERV directly! If we go after the Tesseract we'll need equipment for our EVAs-"

 

"Taken care of," says Ritsuko. She points behind her, where a projector screen has flickered to life. Blueprints cover every inch of the wall, from a heat shield to a long-distance rifle barrel. Mari looks up at the latter with interest before going back to her drawing.

 

"Okay. Fine," Asuka relents. "We have the gear. What about a new plugsuit, though?" She points at the tape holding hers together, glancing between her superiors. "Well?"

 

"Actually. Um." Ritsuko clicks something in her hand, causing the slide to advance. "We _do_ need to design some helmets for you in case, for some reason, your entry plug is breached. So far we've only got ideas, but-"

 

"Here!" Mari's drawing flies across the table, smacking Asuka in the face. The redhead grabs at it with a snarl, her eyes going wide once she sees the design.

 

"Cat ears?!"

 

"It'll take care of the neural clip problem at least!"

 

"It won't," Ritsuko sighs. "The neural clips have to be in contact with your head to work efficiently."

 

Silence fills the meeting room. Misato's eye twitches. Both Ritsuko and Asuka lay their heads on the table. Finally, Mari stands, retrieving her drawing from Asuka's clenched fist. "This is all just a big marketing ploy, isn't it?"

 

No one has an answer for her, but Mari knows it's probably a yes. 


	6. Changes

Everyone at NERV had a ritual or two, secret or not. Asuka knew all of Mari's, from sneaking off to grow her own tea leaves to staring at her cracked pair of glasses on the day before her birthday. This year, she decided, that was going to change.

 

Stealing the glasses was easy. Watching Mari panic over their loss was not. Asuka left the NERV complex shortly after breakfast, citing 'important things' to do. No one questioned her: not Misato, who was coordinating with Kaji and Ritsuko, and certainly not Mari.

 

The ruins of Tokyo-3 were a painful sight, made doubly so by Mari's glasses, which sat lopsidedly on Asuka's face. She hated how looking through them blurred the world, but she did, stopping only to swap them for pair after pair of lenses. A trail of discarded glasses wound through the empty city, some more broken than the others.

 

Asuka made it back to NERV just as the sun dipped below the hills, wearily carrying a pair of glasses in each hand. She barely acknowledged the guards at the door, trudging into the building with a single destination in mind.

 

Mari was still turning their shared room upside-down when Asuka returned. "Hey, Megane. Catch," she said, tossing Mari the old rounded frames.

 

"You found them?" she asked, fumbling with the glasses. Then her eyes focused on the finger marks smeared across the lenses, and Mari fell back against her bed, the sting of betrayal rendering her unable to stand. "You took them."

 

"I wanted you to do something other than stare at them all day," Asuka muttered. "It freaks people out, you know?" Holding out the second pair of red frames, she added, "I also needed them to get you this. I'm tired of seeing you with those broken-ass lenses."

 

Mari stared at the offered glasses, her mouth thinning into a line. "Why?" she asked, the question a ragged gasp.

 

"'Cause it's your birthday tomorrow. And like I said, I don't know what's up with those glasses you've got right now, but I don't like seeing you like that. That's it, okay?"

 

Still, Asuka felt her hands twitch as Mari rose to take her present from them. She watched Mari put them on, the motion slow and almost reverent. "Hey, Asuka. Thanks."

 

"Don't mention it, Megane."

 

"Kone-megane." At Asuka's confused glance, Mari tapped the horned rims of her glasses. "Ah, but if you call me something, it's only fair I get to do the same. How about... Princess?"

 

"Absolutely not," snapped Asuka. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Mari smiling.

 

"That's perfect, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _In which Xairathan proves she cannot write in past tense_


	7. Breaking Things

Asuka doesn't realize Mari is falling until she hears the other pilot's yelp of surprise. She turns in time to see Mari slide down the last few feet of ladder and land hard on her rear. For a brief moment, Mari looks disoriented. Then she laughs, her mirth echoed by the maintenance crews around her, and Asuka rolls her eye. "Misato, you might want to stop putting her in LCL," she drawls, indicating Mari with a jerk of her head. "She's getting high off the stuff." 

 

"Am not." Mari clambers to her feet and waits for Asuka at the bottom of her ladder, her foot tapping happily in time with Asuka's descent. "You're just mad that I'm getting closer to your sync ratio."

 

Asuka shrugs, batting away the pink-clad hand that goes for her nose. Mari flings herself at Asuka's shoulders a split second later, and the red pilot allows the contact, if only to keep her partner satisfied. "Can't you keep your hands to yourself for once?" she asks as they enter the nearby changing room.

 

"Hmm. Maybe if you ask nicely?" Mari disentangles herself from Asuka with a grin and goes to stand facing the corner. Asuka scoffs at the gesture: fourteen years of being in such close proximity have resulted in some incidents, and yet Mari insists on this ritual every time they change.

 

"Do that again and I might just punch you," she threatens, not meaning a single word of it. Her plugsuit pools around her feet as Mari's locker door snaps shut. The other girl is still in her corner, brushing her hair, and Asuka wonders if Mari wears her day clothes under her plugsuit. The uncertainty makes her bristle, and she mumbles something to distract herself. "So what was with the falling?"

 

"Yeah, that." Mari's smile is audible; Asuka can feel it from across the room with her back turned. "One of the rungs on the ladder broke, so-" she claps- "There I went! I'm not hurt at all, thank you for asking."

 

"Who said I was going to?" Asuka snaps back, and immediately regrets it. Mari will know what she means, though. Their brand of vitriolic banter has become like a safety net, something they both rely on to be there to break their falls. "You break a lot of stuff, don't you, Kone-megane? There's the ladder, your glasses..."

 

"Unit-02, several A.T. Fields, and Puppy-boy's SDAT player, too. I seem to break whatever I touch, don't I?"

 

Asuka slams her locker shut, zipping up her jacket as she stalks over to Mari. The pilot of Unit-08 feels a hand on her shoulder, spinning her around "Break my heart, and I really will punch you, you got that?" 

 

"Eh?" Mari squeaks. Asuka smirks, prods her nose, and vanishes from the changing room, the click of the closing door the only evidence of her exit. Realization spreads across Mari's face in the form of an uncharacteristically gentle smile. "Alright, Princess," she says, and follows after Asuka.


	8. Cats, Again

Asuka almost falls off her bed when Mari walks in, a black and white cat nestled in her arms. "Kone-megane! Out!" she shouts. "I don't want it scratching up my jacket and stuff, you got that?"

 

"It can't," Mari sighs, running a hand repeatedly over the cat's head. "He's been declawed, poor thing. Someone went through all that trouble even after Third Impact. I thought maybe Akagi would like to keep him."

 

"Isn't that a good thing, then?" asks Asuka, shuffling around on her bed. "It can't hurt anyone or mess up their things."

 

Mari's smile fades lightly. "Not really. Declawing can make them more aggressive over time, or so I've heard. They won't be able to defend themselves, either."

 

Asuka watches as Mari lowers the cat to the ground, gently nudging it in the direction of the hall. "Akagi's office is that way, little guy. No, that way. See you around, nya? Okay, bye!" She waves after it, and Asuka gets the feeling the cat is actually _listening_ to her eccentric partner. Mari turns to see Asuka staring at her. "Nya?" she asks teasingly.

 

"You're weird sometimes, you know that?" mutters Asuka. Angling her head to look out the doorway, she asks, "If you don't declaw a cat, how do you stop it from scratching everything up, then?"

 

"Simple." Mari walks over to Asuka's bedside and motions for her to move over. Asuka obliges almost grudgingly, but the stern lines on her face vanish the instant Mari snuggles up against her. "You love them."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> _A/N: I think all but one of these ideas came to me during my English final. That was fun._


End file.
